Then-CIA Director George Tenet commented on a January 6, 2000, email from a CIA officer, regarding the Malaysia meeting of future 9/11 attackers: “Once we had learned the names of several of the individuals who were attending the Malaysia meeting, CIA should have placed them on a watchlist that might have prevented their entering the United States. A half dozen other agencies, including the FBI, also had the names and could have done so as well, but did not. That does not absolve CIA from blame. We later discovered that there was inadequate staff training on how to handle watchlist submissions…Clearly a communication breakdown occurred, and we worked hard to rectify the shortcoming once we were aware of it after 9/11. While we were able to get the names of some of the participants, we were never able to determine what went on at the meeting in Malaysia.”
– George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm, Page 196